Sketching adventure in Barcelona

April 2017

Space Oddities - Pushing your sketching boundaries

The "Flat iron buiding" of Poblenou. Bending and changing perspective, testing some of the techniques from the workshops.

Easter in Barcelona. This was my first trip here and I was traveling all alone. After a flight with way to short legroom it was a bless to stretch my legs. The sunshine was blinding as I surfaced from the Metro at Sagrada Família. My first stop since I knew my stay was going be busy with four days of sketching workshops with Isabel Carmona Andreu, Víctor Swasky and Lapin. I thought I better warm up my sketcher hand so why not start here.

Lunch sketch from a café on the other side of the street of Plaça de la Sagrada Família.

Looking back at this sketch I know I would have done it differently if I had given it a another try after the workshops. The workshops were about capturing space, bending and warping perspective to fit it all in the paper. It was really hard to capture the tall slender towers in the landscape sketchbook.

After a full day of workshops I was walking back to my hotel down Avinguda Diagonal. The pavement was still warm and a breeze rattled the leaves. I suppose the locals thought this was a chilly spring night but my Swedish skin thought it was like a summer night. I turned around and there Torre Agbar or Torre Glòries were shining like a glowstick in the dark. This was calling for a night sketch. A lot of people stopped and watched me sketching and asked questions. I really did feel like a street artist at that moment.

Early Good Friday morning, sketching alone in a sleepy, narrow alley before going to the next workshop. A parked motorbike, someone walking the dog, an unmistakable smell of urine and the sound of people waking up and making breakfast through the open windows facing Carrer dels Cecs de Sant Cugat.

Workshop with Swasky in an intersection of Poblenou. Sketching all sides of the open space from the opposite side and moving around until you could stitch the corners together. This was really tricky and needed some planning to fit the page.

These octagonal intersections of Barcelona are nothing like intersections back home in Sweden. The open space in the middle is for people activities and traffic is on the side. Same goes for the ramlas were the middle is a wide pedestian part, bike lanes on both sides and then car lanes and a pedestrian area next to the houses on the sides. Back home the middle of an intersection is almost always an unreachable area circulated by cars or just a square crossing.

One of the workshops with Isabel was to warp the view of the market place with the crazy-golden-mirror-outdoor-ceiling into a semi sphere. Totally exhausting but fun. Figure your eyes in the middle of a sphere. Well we don't have 180° sight but pretend and then everything in front of you is a semi sphere. Then you estimate the angles with your arm to get the proportions. Center is 0°, the circle's edge is 90°, halfway is 45°.

Another workshop with Lapin was to stand really close to a house and then bend the perspective to fit it on the paper. Starting with a referens in the foreground that can give a sense of size and proportion of the building. I chose the old wooden door on a car repair garage at the end of an alley of Poblenou. This way of sketching felt quite natural to me since me and straight lines are not really best friends.

All this stretching and bending perspective but apparently I still could not bend time. "Just one last sketch" was ending up in a missed flight. The last flight of the day. The plane was still at the gate but they did not let me on. Well sometime must be the first, and why not in Barcelona on Easter Day. No affordable tickets on Easter Monday were avaliable, so I got myself 35 extra hours to sketch and see the town. After all I had not even been to any tourist places like La Rambla or Casa Milà.

Plaça de Prim, Barcelona. These gnarly trees were the reason I missed my Easter Sunday evening flight.

Balla Swing Festival at Plaça Reial.

I found La Rambla rather boring and ended up in Plaça Reial at the Balla Swing Festival. The square was full of people listening and dancing to a live orchestra.

Iron gates of Barcelona.

Barcelona was full of cool iron gates. In Poblenou it was mostly roll down steel shutters but with street art on. A lot of faces. Unfortunately many of them were removed or destroyed and I forgot to take photo. The gates in the city center were showing up great craftmanship. The organic shapes of La Pedrera gate was exceptional, especially from the inside, in backlight.

Most cities have a square full of pigeons, Plaça de Cataluna was no exception. Several salesmen were selling breadcrums, selfiesticks and ballons while children were chasing the pigeons.

The beautiful lamp posts with integrated benches in mosaic at Passeig de Gràcia along with the Gaudí tiles on the sidewalk. Both an intricate piece of art that went straight to my heart. I can't wait to go back and expolore more parts of this beautiful city.